Chapter 23
After a few minutes, a female guard came to escort me back to the waiting area.
“Whatever happened to Joe Long?” I asked her. Joe Long was the correctional captain, the senior guard, the last time I visited MSP. His skin was so tough, it could have been used to make saddles.
“He retired after an injury,” she said. “He’s taken over the family bar in Rockland.”
“Bet you miss him a lot.”
She managed to keep a straight face. “We’re learning to live without him.”
“What kind of injury?”
“Someone shot him in the foot.”
Her voice and expression were devoid of anything approaching sympathy.
“Ouch,” I said. “Did you put together a collection?”
“We tried, but it wasn’t enough.”
“For what?”
“For the guy to come back and shoot him in the other foot.”
Alcock was seated on a hard chair in the waiting area, working through case notes on his lap. We left the prison together. Only outside did we speak of Ward Vose and Scott Theriault, because the guards heard everything. Alcock lit a cigarette and smoked it while leaning against his car.
“Well?” he said.
“Would you like me to state the obvious?”
“It’s as good a place as any to start. Going straight to the nebulous would be confusing for a simple man like me.”
“Vose is consumed by guilt for failing his son. He wants to hire me to alleviate it, but that won’t work. Vose will carry his pain with him for the rest of his life, and he should. He’s a weak man and he was a poor father.”
“Spoken like a stern arbiter,” said Alcock.
“Or one who knows,” I replied. “That was why you came to Moxie and me, right? Because our respective pasts aligned with your case.”
“We take advantage of the Fates when they smile on us,” said Alcock.
“Did you tell Vose about my daughter or did he already know?”
“I told him. Ward isn’t much for reading newspapers or even watching TV. He’s fond of books, though.” Alcock took a long drag on his cigarette. “All told, he’s a perplexing, frustrating individual. So: Will you work on his behalf?”
“Like I told him,” I said, “I’d prefer not to.”
“Is there a ‘but’?”
“More than one.”
“Would Mallory Norton be among them?”
“Is there anything to prove she was the girl Scott was seeing?” I asked. “Assuming Vose hasn’t just conjured the relationship out of thin air to draw me in. The police have come up with nothing so far.”
“I haven’t gone looking,” said Alcock. “That’s why I’m trying to hire you.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Ward would lie to you about anything Scott might or might not have said.
He’s too shrewd for that—and strangely, too honest. Ward would steal the eyeballs from his grandmother’s head, but he’d never deny having done it. ”
Which didn’t mean he was right about Mallory Norton and Scott Theriault being intimates, but it was another loose end, like the injury to Scott’s leg and his decision to head away from civilization, not toward it, when he broke out of Spero.
Bingham lay southeast of the school, and if Scott and Mallory had been an item, it might have made sense for him to contact her when he fled, but by then Mallory Norton had been missing for days.
Could she have been so unhappy at home, and so smitten with Scott, that she’d agreed to rendezvous with him deep in the woods if after he managed to escape?
If so, why hadn’t she returned to Bingham when he didn’t show?
Or maybe he did show, and what then? But that didn’t square with what Ward Vose claimed: that a girl had missed her date with Scott, and without explanation.
Unless, of course, Scott Theriault was lying to his father and knew exactly what had happened to Mallory Norton.
I thought about my current case load. It wasn’t heavy, and neither was it very interesting: a trio of insurance investigations and some trial prep for Moxie, none of it urgent.
Also, with Sam in college, I couldn’t afford to turn down work, or not without resorting to passing off Cheez Whiz on crackers as dinner for two with Macy, and then it wouldn’t be too long before I was sleeping alone again.
“I told Vose I’d give it a couple of days,” I said. “If I hit a wall, I’ll put together a report and step away.”
“I’ll pay you in advance for a week’s work,” said Alcock.
“Expenses extra, to be receipted—not because I don’t trust you, but no sense in giving the IRS more than it’s owed.
If you decide you’re done before the money runs out, you can keep it.
Those are my client’s instructions, by the way.
He has a rainy day fund, and not a lot to spend it on. ”
Not even his boy went unspoken. Alcock stubbed out the cigarette, considered flicking the butt, and instead unlocked his car and dropped it in the ashtray.
“If I quit, you’ll get a refund,” I said. “That’s how I prefer it.”
“You don’t strike me as the quitting kind.” He handed me a business card. “Call anytime, day or night. I’m divorced, so the only person you’ll be waking is me.”
“You still wear a wedding band,” I said.
“Force of habit. It’s recent.”
“Suppose you get lucky in the meantime?”
“The last time I got lucky, she married me,” said Alcock. “After that, my luck ran right out.”